Believe it! The mad scientists of Michigan University give us HERCULES.

Pumping 300 terawatts of power, sildenafil this laser is one bad mother. Beaming with promise of scientific and medical benefits, HERCULES has taken over several rooms at UM. Indeed, this tiny shaft of power is “a 1.3-micron speck about 100th the diameter of a human hair” and is the most intense laser in the known universe. Just check out these stats: “The record-setting beam measures 20 billion trillion watts per square centimeter. It contains 300 terawatts of power. That’s 300 times the capacity of the entire U.S. electricity grid”. Unf.

Wonderful. For more insanely high energy fun you should investigate the Z machine, the worlds largest and most powerful X-ray generator. The Z machine outputs 290 terawatts and they are appearently working on raising that to 350. The image of the Z machine discharging included on its wikipedia page (higher res version here) is among my all time favorite photos, and in fact my coilhouse user icon is a snippet of detail from that image.

In all seriousness this is a cool device and anything with that many bright lights going all about is a winner in my book. Makes one really wonder what the governments notorious Black Projects have brewing or the little publicized (outside of their latest recruiting commercial) Air Force Space Program…you know them and lasers…